


Timers

by bluerosebouquet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, lmao i could NOT help but write a happy ending so SUE ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluerosebouquet/pseuds/bluerosebouquet
Summary: Dean wakes up in Purgatory.  Alone.  15x09 coda
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 138





	Timers

Dean wakes up. Alone. His head hurts.

Looking around, he sees no one. The Leviathan, Cas, gone. Nothing but him, a broken angel trap, and a still smoking Leviathan to keep him company.

Fucking Purgatory, man.

Dean remembers, like a flash of lightning across a stormy Kansas sky, the first time he was here, how he spent a year looking for Cas, though he only called him “the angel.” Didn’t want the monsters to realize how incredibly important he was to Dean.

“Cas?” he calls out, thinking that, surely, Cas had fought the Leviathan and gotten away. Just like last time. 

No one answers. A pit in his stomach begins to form. He tries again.

“Cas?”

His voice echoes across the clearing. He knows he’s drawing too much attention to himself. It’s not like he’s alone here, there are god knows how many monsters that want his blood lurking in every shadow. But, he never had much sense when it comes to Cas.

Nothing. No movement. No khaki trench coat coming through the trees. 

“Okay,” Dean whispers, squaring his shoulders and reminding himself that he doesn’t have time to be afraid, “Find the angel. Take two.”

He spends the next few precious hours walking through the unending forests of Purgatory, generally back to the rift created by Michael. He keeps an eye on the clock, and, as the seconds turn into minutes turn into hours, the desperation in his heart grows. 

He nearly breaks into a panic attack when he sees what looks like a trench coat piled next to a tree. He scrambles to it, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get to it. He grabs at the pile, terrified of seeing blank blue eyes staring up at him.

Leaves crunch under his hands.

He huffs out a relieved laugh. He keeps going.

As time ticks by, he starts breathing harder, his throat sore from calling Cas’ name over and over, but that doesn’t stop him.

“Cas?”

He checks his phone again. 29:55.

What the hell is he supposed to do?

“No, no, no,” he breathes out, looking around, trying to will Cas to come back. To come back to him.

_You couldn’t forgive me, and you couldn’t move on. You were too angry. I left, but you didn’t stop me._

The words echo in his head, bouncing off the walls like one of those shitty 2000s screensavers that he and Sam would stare at when the research had been stalled.

_Be honest_ , a voice in the back of his head tells him.

And Dean begins doing what he had done every single unending night in Purgatory. He prays.

“Cas?” his voice is quieter than he expected it to be, he had intended to speak normally, but something was different here. Something had always been different here.

“Cas I hope you can hear me. That wherever you are, it’s not too late.”

_I need you to come back_ , he tries to say, but he couldn’t lie in Purgatory, he had never been able to, and the words that he had fought for nearly eleven years to push into the tiniest part of the back of his mind made their way to the front, falling out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“I shoulda stopped you. You’re my best friend, but I just let you go, cause that was easier than admitting I was wrong.”

He feels the tears, hot, stinging the cool air around him. He lets them come. He lets the weight of what he’s done, the idea that it might be too late, that things with Cas, because he will find Cas, he always finds Cas, are too damaged, too broken. His knees buckle at the thought and he hits the forest floor, the roughness of the bark of the tree he clings to the only thing that keeps him from floating away.

“I don’t know why I get so angry. I just know that- I know that it’s always been there, and when things go bad, it comes out. And I, I can’t stop it. No matter how bad I want to, I just can’t stop it. And I, I forgive you, of course I forgive you. I’m sorry it took me so long-”

He breaks off. Not even Purgatory could drag that admission out of him.

“I’m sorry it took me til now to say it. Cas, I’m so sorry. Man, I hope you can hear me. I hope you can hear me.”

He looks around. He waits for the angel.

The angel doesn’t come.

He never did here, anyway.

“Okay.” 

Dean stands, forcing his legs to keep working, keep moving, keep looking for the angel.

Five minutes. He can see the rift, glowing in the distance. 

_Where are you?_

2:56.

_Please. Please._

“Dean.”

He lifts his gun.

There’s the angel. He has blood on his face, but he’s there, alive.

“Cas?”

Cas stands, shaking the dirt and the moss of his coat.

“You made it.”

“I made it?”

Cas stumbles towards him, and Dean hugs him with all he has, letting out the kind of breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Cas is warm despite the chill, his hands grip Dean’s back, and, despite the fact that Dean wants to stand there with him forever, he lets him go. They’re on a schedule after all.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

He’s lying, he has that little crease in between his eyebrows he gets when he lies. Dean doesn’t know if Cas knows he sees things like that.

“What happened?”

“They were after me, not you, I figured it would be safest to give myself up.”

“They take you to Eve?”

“Yeah, we were en route. I waited until I saw this.”

Cas, beautiful, amazing, incredible Cas pulls out the ugliest looking flower in the universe. A Leviathan blossom.

“It got a little...smushed.”

Cas smiles, Dean can’t ever get enough of that smile.

“Once I had the blossom I fought, caught them off guard, they fought back. I managed to get away.”

“You did it,” Dean’s grins spreads across his face, he wants Cas to know how important this was, how important he was to Dean, “You did it, Cas.”

“Well, they’re still after me. We should hurry.”

They should, they should hurry. All reason says they need to get out of there as soon as they possibly can. But the voice is back. Be honest, it says. With Cas here, really, solidly here in front of him, maybe it was time to...

“Okay Cas, I need to say something-”

But Cas cuts him off.

“You don’t have to say it, I heard your prayer.”

Cas smiles, turns away, and Dean’s brain is screaming to call him back, to say that’s not what he wanted to tell him, but Dean’s gotten very very good at hiding that part of himself away, what’s a few more decades?

Dean tries, once they get back, he tries to focus on the ritual, tries to focus on defeating Chuck, tries to focus on losing to Chuck, but through it all, that voice is at the back of his head, scratching at the little box he kept that part of himself in.

It doesn’t go away, not even back at the bunker, not when he tells Sam they’ll find another way, not when Sam gives him a tight smile and leaves to shut himself in his room, not in the silence that follows between him and Cas. So, what can he do?

“Hey Cas?”

“Yeah?”

“I knew you heard the prayer.”

Cas looks up at him, and Dean makes the supreme effort to look him in the eyes. He had to see Dean, really see him for this.

“And that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

Cas says nothing, still staring at Dean, staring at him in that way that made it a little easier to say this. He takes a deep, steadying breath. He hears the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall.

“I love you.”

Cas takes a full five seconds to process his words and, four 4.99 agonizing seconds, Dean thinks that he may have just made a terrible fucking mistake.

And then, Cas smiles this radiant smile, the kind of smile that’d warm anybody up from their head to their toes, and Cas leans forward, without any hesitation, and presses his lips to Dean’s.

It’s gentle and brief and exactly way too short for Dean’s taste, but the look that Cas gives him when he pulls away is everything Dean’s ever wanted.

“I love you, too.”

Time ticks by, but this time, Dean doesn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all know I had to do it to em. Wow WHAT AN EPISODE AMIRIGHT??? Anyway, they gay.  
> Hope you guys enjoy! :)


End file.
